Review by Choice Review
In a pessimistic exploration of the clash between historic preservation and local community involvement, de Souza Santos (Univ. of Oxford, UK) presents the results of her ethnographic study of the UNESCO World Heritage site Ouro Preto in Brazil. As a Brazilian scholar from another heritage site (Brasília), the author is uniquely qualified to elucidate the difficulties presented when a community in a historically significant (and preserved) area struggles with making that setting more efficient and comfortable for its residents. In the 1930s, the center of Ouro Preto was designated culturally significant, based on the reasoning that earlier political struggles in the mountainside town had been fundamental to the construction of Brazilian nationalism. Missing in that interpretation, however, was any consideration for the daily hardships of slaves (especially in the local mines), or for the town's domination by the colonial upper class. De Souza Santos concludes that by preventing change from occurring without a multilevel political process of approval in the historic core, preservation edicts in fact perpetuate inequality among the city's residents. This well-argued text, supplemented by numerous photographs, has important implications for historians, anthropologists, and preservationists alike. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals. --Roberta M. Delson, American Museum of Natural History
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
